Cast Your Vote for Christian Websites

Whether it’s on the best-seller lists, survey results or in the voting booth many Christians today feel underrepresented, or even misrepresented, by polls and statistics. Now there is a new way to let your voice be heard and “vote” for your favorite websites without having to answer any questions or fill out any surveys—with the Alexa Toolbar. In fact, when you have the Alexa Toolbar on your internet browser you don’t need to do anything aside from typical web surfing to show your support of the Christian websites you visit.

How does this work? It couldn’t possibly be easier. After downloading the Alexa toolbar, your visit to a website is essentially a vote that the site is worth your time. Data is collected and Alexa assigns a rank to every website on the internet. As a site gets more and more popular it gets closer to the coveted #1 ranking (currently held by Yahoo!). This is a free and completely hassle-free way to support the Christian websites you visit and raise their profile amongst secular sites.

Of course there are additional benefits to having the toolbar besides letting your voice (or mouse clicks) be heard. You can instantly click a button and see the “Whois” information about the people that own the site you are visiting, see a suggested list of similar sites, block pop-ups, email the page to a friend and so much more. You can also see the Alexa rank of every website you visit at the top of the page, which is a great way to find out how popular or reputable a website is. For example, if you are purchasing expensive jewelry over the web, it’s comforting to know you are making your order at a website that has an Alexa rank of 16,727 (BlueNile.com) rather than a site that looks impressive, yet is not even in the top 10 million sites on the net! There is no guarantee that an Alexa ranking ensures credibility or lack thereof, it is just one more way to make an informed decision when purchasing over the internet.

Click here to visit the Alexa Toolbar download page and follow the instructions in the page. The toolbar requires Windows and Internet Explorer 6.0 or greater. Firefox users can download the Sparky Toolbar, which is also made by Alexa and provides all the same features and benefits.

When downloading any tool on the internet it’s always important to know what you are getting. Alexa collects data to rank websites and provide related links on your toolbar. For a great description of how and why they do this refer to the Alexa Toolbar Privacy Policy. Regardless of whether or not you use of the Alexa Toolbar, you are sending information to each website you visit as soon as you arrive there. Alexa is simply utilizing that information to provide a service to you and all other toolbar users.

When considering all the benefits of downloading the Alexa Toolbar it’s easy to see why it is so popular. So download the Alexa Toolbar today and start “voting” for your favorite websites.

Comments

Alexa has been around for years and is now owned by Amazon. The question of its reliability or usefulness is being raised in some technology sectors. I would more highly recommend StumbleUpon, which allows you to vote up or down on each site you visit using a toolbar. When you vote up if someone is “stumbling” that site may come up for them, if they share similar interests.

I have never noticed any “gotchas”. As David stated in the first comment, Alexa is owned by Amazon so you will have a tiny Amazon.com link at the end of the toolbar at all times. But that’s not such a bad thing : )